Ed Kuepper and Mark Moffatt featured in the Courier Mail

Ed Kuepper and Mark Moffatt meet again at Bigsound after making The Saints classic (I’m) Stranded in 1976

By: Noel Mengel

ONE June night in 1976, four young men turned up at Window recording studio in Buchanan St, West End.

They had never been in a professional studio before.

But what happened in the next three hours made rock ‘n’ roll history.

The record The Saints made that night, (I’m) Stranded, remains the one undisputed rock classic ever recorded in Brisbane.
Source: The Courier-Mail

Recording engineer Mark Moffatt had returned from London where he had seen the growing pub rock scene, the beginnings of punk rock. Moffatt went on to become a record producer in Nashville.
Ed Kuepper, who provides the guitar attack that drives the song and its B-side No Time, became one of Australia’s most respected songwriters.

The two would not meet again until this week at the Bigsound music conference in Brisbane. Their memory of the night when they captured the rock ‘n’ roll equivalent of lightning in a jar is clear.

Kuepper played through Moffatt’s 1960 Fender Super amp, creating a sound that rockers have been trying to emulate ever since.

“In London, I worked in a guitar shop and people would bring in their amps to sell for cash,” Moffatt recalls. “I could hear this thunderous noise upstairs so I went to see what was making it and bought the amp that afternoon.”

Moffatt, a guitarist in the Carol Lloyd Band, had recorded in Sydney, where he picked up tips about microphone placement.

“There was a cement hallway at the studio, so for The Saints I put a microphone in there. You can hear that in the chorus of No Time where it takes off. I still hear that now and go ‘Wow’.”

(I’m) Stranded remains one of the most influential Australian records ever.

“It was fortuitous that Mark was there, he was sympathetic and easy to work with,” Kuepper says. “We hadn’t heard ourselves recorded before except on a cassette deck.

“We sent the tape off to be pressed and getting back the 45s and playing it on my crappy little stereo, that’s what convinced me it was great.”

Kuepper bought every rock paper he could find and posted copies to the editors. When the reviews started arriving from London, the critics were raving.